Napster bars 2 million files from its users

Napster has started to make good on its vow to stop the trading of copyrighted files, barring access to two million file names, or about 1,000 distinct copyrighted songs. The music-swapping service -- the target of a copyright infringement lawsuit from several major record companies -- is waiting for U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Hall Patel to release her injunction. The case has been returned to her courtroom after an appeals court found her original ruling too broad. Originally, Patel ruled that the service could be held liable if it failed to prevent the exchange of copyrighted material. The suit may destroy Napster in its current form, if the court rules that the service is illegal. Napster attorney David Boies said in a federal court hearing Friday that the company would begin screening the music files over the weekend. "We are fighting to preserve the Napster community and the Napster file sharing experience," Napster Chief Executive Officer Hank Barry said in a statement. "We proposed a workable injunction that follows the Ninth Circuit ruling and keeps the Napster community together while we are working to settle this case and transition to our new membership-based service." A Napster spokeswoman declined to comment further, saying that the company is waiting for a clearer picture of the future. Napster has already proposed a $1 billion settlement in the case. "We expect [Napster] will honor the representations they made to the court," Hilary Rosen, CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America, said in a statement. Penn students, however, have not hesitated to speak their minds. Thomas Mullen, a Wharton freshman, was ambivalent toward the decision. "Napster is really just a way around copyright law," Mullen said. "I'm in favor of it because I use it, but there's another side of me that says that if the artists don't make money, then we're not going to get good music in the future. There's no real good solution for it." But Wharton sophomore Akshay Mangla said that any attempt to block the exchange of copyrighted material is futile. "I think it is useless, because I think they're fighting technology that's going to end up pervading regardless," Mangla said. College freshman William Scott agreed, saying there was little point in trying to stop music trading. "There will be plenty of other programs that come up and do the same thing," Scott said. "I don't think that would really stop it, it would just slow it down " Currently, Napster is starting to block files whose names contain the titles of copyrighted songs or the names of specific artists. But this does not allow the company to block all of the service's copyrighted material, because users can rename a file so it does not contain a song title or artist's name. Users who find no songs under "Metallica," for example, can find the band's music by spelling its name with one "l." The company has acknowledged the problems with this form of blocking, and users have already begun to take advantage of its limitations. Napster, however, has promised to account for common variations of titles and artist names in its blocking. One Web site has already sprung up to bring the art of misspelling file names to the level of a science. http://www.timwilson.org has introduced a service where users can enter a name and get a "translation" to rename their songs or search on Napster. Open-source advocates, who had long been critical of Napster's decision to keep the source code of its software secret, have expressed hope that Napster's decision to block will lead users to try alternative software. The Associated Press contributed to this article.

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